mythmavenfandomcom-20200214-history
Is Jesus the son of God?
Overview Mainstream Christianity maintains that Jesus is the son of God. Direct Biblical Evidence : Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” : Jesus replied, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven. : --Mt 16:16-17 NIV There are many such references in the New Testament, though there is evidence of tampering with the New Testament in order to solidify the pre-existing but undocumented view of Jesus as the son of God (Misquoting Jesus Ch 6 Antiadoptinistic Alterations in the Text p 155). Indirect Biblical Evidence According to the New Testament, Jesus performed miracles such as turning water into wine (Jn 2:1-11 NIV ) and walking on water (Jn 6:16-21 NIV ). The miracles are cited by Christians of examples of Jesus' divinity. Some followers interpret these stories metaphorically (Liberating the Gospels ). Assuming the New Testament is literal truth, miracles do not offer evidence that Jesus is the son of God, merely that he has a higher knowledge of natural systems than his peers. The same goes for Jesus' gentle nature, philosophical insights, and claims of divinity; while each of these is contested, assuming any or all of these simply proves that Jesus was a decent human being. Mad, Bad, or God C.S. Lewis has argued in Mere Christianity for Jesus' divinity as follows: I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronising nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. ... Now it seems to me obvious that He was neither a lunatic nor a fiend: and consequently, however strange or terrifying or unlikely it may seem, I have to accept the view that He was and is God. It may seem that Lewis has proved that Jesus is the son of God. However, this argument is flawed. Jesus may indeed have been insane or evil. He did curse an innocent fig tree (Mk 11:12-24 NIV ). There is another flaw: Jesus may have been psychologically sound but under the mistaken impression that he is the son of God. There is a final flaw in Lewis' argument. It may be that Jesus existed as a preacher and only much later did scribes call him the son of God. Jesus would be sane, but wholly human, and the scribes who wrote about him either insane, evil, or simply wishful thinkers. Alternative Views Adoptionist Christians do not consider Jesus to be the son of God but a symbolically adopted son for his piety. --Wikipedia: Adoptionism Jews tend to consider Jesus a false prophet. --Wikipedia: Judaism's view of Jesus Muslims do not consider Jesus to be the son of God but a prophet. --Wikipedia: Jesus in Islam Some historians maintain that not only was Jesus not the son of God, he never existed at all (The Christ Conspiracy ).